Commentary: CPAC ‘09: We Are a Majority

Last weekend, thousands of politically active college students descended upon Washington. They arrived ready to let their voices be heard about the issues of importance to them. The students filled massive speaking halls to hear the leaders and personalities that speak to their concerns. A demonstration on Capitol Hill along with pins, totes, and posters allowed these young activists to vocalize their opinions. Must be a crowd of rambunctious liberal students, right? Wrong!

From the moment the UCO contingent of College Republicans stepped foot into the hotel hosting the Conservative Political Action Conference, I could feel a level of excitement and passion. Upon arrival to the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C., one of the first sights was two girls dressed in grass skirts along with a polar bear. A sight such as this one might normally indicate a liberal tree-hugging presence, but we knew better. When we approached them, we learned that they were trying to downplay the hype that has been swelling around man-made global warming and encouraging more scientific research on the topic.

Along with the laundry list of impressive and high-profile conservative speakers at CPAC, was many informative seminars. I attended two. The first seminar that I attended was a public speaking workshop sponsored by the Leadership Institute. One difficulty that many conservatives encounter, I believe, is that we find it more difficult to speak out about what we believe. Some mistake this hesitancy to mean we are not passionate about the issues we support and the philosophy by which we live. That is entirely incorrect. If anything, for me personally, I am reticent to speak out because I know the manipulative tactics liberals have used against me, and the way in which they twist my words. The second seminar that I attended was sponsored by Young America’s Foundation and provided many helpful tips and hints on how to bring conservative speakers to campuses and how to let the voices of conservative college students be heard on liberal-laden campuses. I found this seminar to be extremely informative and helpful.

Central to the conference was an impressive list of conservative leaders and personalities, along with informational panels. Having hoped that he would throw his hat into the 2008 presidential race, I was most interested in what Newt Gingrich would say. He called upon the party to make the election of 2010 and this fall’s elections in Virginia and New Jersey “among the most consequential in American history.” Gingrich emphasized his the importance of a Republican victory in 2010 by saying:

“They have shared openly and honestly with us their vision of higher taxes, bigger government, more bureaucracy, greater corruption, more political power by people unworthy of doing it, and a policy which will kill jobs, cripple the economy, trap children in schools that are disasters and weaken
America’s future. They have every right to have that vision and we have every right to go to the polls and defeat it now that it is clear who they are.”

Gingrich encouraged the administration to stop punishing businesses for sending jobs overseas, but to instead reward businesses for bringing or keeping jobs in the states. His suggestions: have zero capital gains tax (as China does), which will lead people to begin putting capital back into the stock market. Secondly, he recommends the corporate tax rate be reduced to meet the Irish level of 12.5%. Finally, to Attorney General Holder’s comment that America is a “nation of cowards,” Newt Gingrich responded that “This is a nation of people courageous enough to tell the truth and this is a nation of people courageous enough to insist that we won’t be governed by people who won’t tell us the truth.” Bravo Fmr. Speaker Gingrich!!

Ann Coulter was just one of the high profile personalities to speak. Her thirty-minute speech was filled with nonstop one-liners. Speaking of Obama’s cliched campaign slogans, Coulter stated that “if he thinks people wanted change in 2008, wait for 2012,” to which the crowd roared. On the media’s comparison of Obama to Reagan and Lincoln, Coulter was astonished that the media could not find a Democrat leader worthy of comparing him to.

Rush Limbaugh, the keynote speaker at CPAC, was the most highly publicized and has since become the most controversial. I did not make it into the main ballroom. The Regency room was filled more than an hour and a half before the event. I did, however, watch his speech from one of the three packed overflow ballrooms. I watched the speech in its entirety (and have since watched it once more) and I can tell you that the line “I want Obama to fail” was not the theme of Limbaugh’s speech. First, it is important to remember that Rush is a “shock jock,” but the point he was making is that we as conservatives should not feel ashamed to oppose something that we feel is detrimental to the vitality of this country. Rush said that he wanted Obama to fail because he wants this country to survive. That is not saying that we want the country to fail–quite the contrary. Rush hopes that the President FAILS to pass more high-spending big-government bills as many of us see just how damaging irrational spending in the hands of this administration can and will be if it is allowed to happen. The main point that Rush Limbaugh hit on was that the conservative party is the party of the people. We want people to succeed. We do not want them to depend on government, but rather we want to take away any government entity that would keep them from reaching their full potential. All people are created equal but we are not guaranteed equal outcomes.

I heard several other speakers that were extremely intelligent and enlightening and there were many more that I missed. The main thing that I drew from my experience at CPAC 2009 is that conservatives are not a minority, but rather we are a majority. We are a majority that has maybe gotten slightly off message in recent years and have not done an effective enough job of reaching out to the American people and showing them that we represent them. Another thing that I realized is that Republican-Conservative ideas exist everywhere because they make so much sense. Even from the deep, dark, democrat depths of a New Jersey college campus, I met some of the most vocal College Republicans (holla TCNJ). This cannot be a time of apathy. Our country demands our attention. We must work for what is right and just now–not in 1345 days (the 2012 presidential election). Furthermore, as Rep. Patrick McHenry (NC) said, we are not the future, we are the NOW!

Bonnie Brown is a senior at the University of Central Oklahoma and the Communications Director for UCO College Republicans.